CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (FENG LIU YI DAI) Luminaries

Interweaving footage collected over the last several decades, including new material, outtakes, deleted scenes and segments from previously released films, filmmaker Jia Zhangke chronicles a changing environment and the impact of technological advancement to construct a rhapsodic portrait of contemporary China. Casting his wife and eternal muse Zhao Tao as his central character, an out-of-time, whimsical love story sees Qiaoqiao in perpetual search of her lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who disappeared long ago in search of a better life. Traveling from the city of Datong to the Yangtze River, where millions are facing relocation under the threat of landslides that are the result of dam construction, Qiaoqiao is witness to a changing political, social and environmental landscape. Encapsulated with inventive formal experimentation, CAUGHT BY THE TIDES is a vivid and poetic recontextualization of Jia’s filmography that documents the passage of time, and momentous historical events through the melancholic lens of memory. –Malin Kan